Anthem of Our Dying Day
by horsecrazy2
Summary: This is not his death. He still can’t quite believe it. This is a stranger’s corpse embracing the tattered remnants of his soul, and it is them, not him, that feels a weight like a hand pressing against the eyelids.'


**A/N: I had ideas for this one-shot bouncing around in my head all day at work, so I went ahead and burned it out of my system. It takes place at the end of the game, when Seifer comes out of Time Compression. And yes, once again I snatched the title from Story of the Year. All credit goes to them for the title.**

**Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII is still not mine, dammit.**

**Anthem of Our Dying Day**

Ocean

Balamb

He is staring up into a sky bleeding death over the crimson-painted mirror that is the cushion he floats on, and each slow eye blink is excruciating.

They are flutters of the lashes that tear flesh weighted with salt, and they are flutters of the lashes that flash scattered bits of memory through the splinters of his mind. His thoughts form the whirling vortex that devours his sanity, and…

And above him, the cherry stain of sunlight strokes its bloody fingers across this battered skeleton of a man. Like he is nothing, just so much flotsam drifting in gleaming ruby waters.

_-Hello little boy…hello…come kneel before me-_

Her eyes look down on him from the dying sun; he can see them in the cotton wisp clouds smeared through the gory sky. His hands lift, and he forms them into a silent picture frame around the glowing gems that are her eyes. They are like diamonds, that dazzling, but not that pure--they are shot through with veins of obsidian, venomous black like the rotten core of her soul.

_-They are here to kill me, my Knight. Kill them all-_

She is a fallen angel on the sea beside him.

Their hands are joined--they are a union of cold flesh, and her fingers are frigid marble in his.

_-Kill them all…-_

_-Seifer, please don't do this…Seifer, she's using you-_

Her fingers feel like her throat; fragile, vulnerable, and frozen in the rigor mortis that is death's macabre trademark. Her eyes are the cold marbles holding his final judgment; they are the sky before its tears of blood, and they are empty.

Her face is naked without her glasses.

_-Her voice is a siren call in his veins, and it is screaming for him to kill the little blonde bitch-_

His coat spreads beneath him like her hair, gray like ash, gray like the desolation that is Time Compression.

Her hair scatters in a dead halo around them both. It is borrowed innocence, stolen, and he--

_-Her voice is a siren call in his veins, and it is screaming for him to kill the little blonde bitch. So he does-_

_-Her voice is gone, and he is alone in the howling gale of Time Compression, in the dead silence that is like cotton wadded into the ear canal, in the tearing agony that shreds his heart into useless meat, in the absence of feeling that is absolute numbness-_

This is not his death.

He bleeds like the sun above him into the water, and because the water already holds the sky's blood, because it cradles the limp brokenness of her body--

It doesn't matter.

This is not his blaze of glory. This is nonchalance. This is solitude, and he used to be the hero of the story, but suddenly, suddenly--

He thinks he might be the bad guy.

_-Her voice is a siren call in his veins, and it is screaming for him to kill the little blonde bitch. So he does. The barbed fangs of her weapon slash crimson grooves into his arm, but it doesn't matter, because she is still inside him, the brittle shell that is Seifer Almasy wrapping her power in bitter childhood fantasies-_

She is the hero of the story, and he is her murderer.

There is an emptiness inside his brain where the sorceress used to be--but her claws have left deep marks that leak poison into the shadows of his mind, and they curdle into memory.

_-Her voice is a siren call in his veins, and it is screaming for him to kill the little blonde bitch. So he does. The barbed fangs of her weapon slash crimson grooves into his arm, but it doesn't matter, because she is still inside him, the brittle shell that is Seifer Almasy wrapping her power in bitter childhood fantasies. His fingers wrap the blonde bitch's throat, and her protest is just a gag, insignificant like she is. She is life in the palm of his hand, warm and throbbing and moon-pale. She is life itself, and he has the power to destroy her._

_So he does. Her neck is kindling in his gloved palm. He caresses it like a lover, like a friend-_

_And the smile in his eyes drips power, and madness-_

Her throat is dented with the impressions of his fingers.

_-Her eyes bulge their desperation at him; her fingers form the claws that try to scratch his hands to shreds, like she is strong enough to stand against him. She isn't--and he laughs, his mirth like the steel vise of the garrote that is his hand-_

He used to be the hero, but she was better, and it was she that deserved his death, she that went out in his blaze of glory. Her mind was the weapon that formed the globe of fira that peeled the shirt from his chest and scorched the flesh beneath into a charred crater.

He should have known better. Because she used to tell him--when she smelled of fresh cookies and not the stale odor of death--

_-Seifer, you should put down your sword and come have dinner, ok-_

He carried four feet of steel that used to be simple wood through his belly, through the column of his spine.

_-Quistis, no!!-_

His eyes swallowed the sun, but hers--

Hers simply reflected it. Looking glass with no observer.

_-His laughter is her final soundtrack-_

He should have known better than this. Because she was the hero--

And heroes aren't supposed to die.

_-Blue-gray steel is the mirror that shows him his final expression; lips peeled back over teeth in a feral wolf's grin, eyes that still hold her image branded across the irises, chest burned and flaking-_

Above this strange alliance of protagonist and antagonist, gull screams trickle like cold water into his ears.

_-Their dance is a rerun, their blades twin arcs of silver that know one another-_

He is still wearing his gloves, but they are soaked now, and his hands feel very heavy. His coat is a sodden death chain, and he feels it dragging at him, a blatant beckon into the ocean's greedy embrace.

_-Burned muscles tug awkwardly--he jerks like a corpse re-animated from the grave, and suddenly Lionheart is an icy kiss just above his belly button. He looks down in astonishment, from the blue-gray steel that is the death trap of his killer's gaze, and--_

_His laughter has stopped-_

This is not his death.

He still can't quite believe it--this is a stranger's corpse embracing the tattered remnants of his soul, and it is them, not him, that feels a weight like a hand pressing against the eyelids.

Her hand is still resting in his.

This last flutter of the lashes gives him one final glimpse of the pale corpse-flesh of her skin, and her eyes still accuse him, unblinking and forever damning.

The sky stops bleeding above him, because he sees only black now.

There is not even a faded memory of the sorceress' voice left now.


End file.
